Did Qin Shihuang really build the Great Wall to defend the Huns?

Defend against foreign enemies, such as Xiongnu. It is also to establish a little merit.

During the Warring States period more than 2,000 years ago, there were wars among the vassal states. At that time, the battle was mainly fought by infantry, and the wall built with mud was enough to resist those enemies who invaded from the outside. So every country will have its own walls. At the same time, nomadic people in the north, known as Huns in ancient times, often invaded the south, so Qin, Zhao, Yan and other countries successively built city walls on their northern borders.

In 22 1 BC, Qin Shihuang finally unified China, sent general Meng Tian to drive out the Huns, and ordered the walls of various countries to be connected together, and then expanded and strengthened them. In this case, a spectacular Great Wall of Wan Li appeared in the northern part of China. The existence of the Great Wall in Wan Li has indeed protected the safety of people and property in the northern region.

It can be said that when Qin Shihuang did not unify China, the Great Wall already existed; Qin Shihuang's contribution only lies in his order to reconnect the original walls of various countries. In fact, the people who really created the Great Wall of Wan Li should be hundreds of thousands of army soldiers and thousands of poor people in Qian Qian at that time. The Great Wall of Wan Li is a great miracle in the history of human civilization. According to an astronaut who once landed on the moon, the most obvious building on the earth from the moon is the Great Wall of Wan Li in China.

Xiongnu was not a single nation, but a multi-ethnic unified country outside the Great Wall at that time. But its main body is the Mongolian language family. Huns pronounce Huns or Huns in Mongolian, and so do foreigners. NU (slave) after HUN (Hungary) only means the majority, just like "-S" in English. Nude still plays this role in Mongolian today. After the northern Xiongnu moved westward and the southern Xiongnu was defeated by the Mongolian-speaking Xianbei people, some people moved to the Central Plains, and the remaining 6,543,800 households accepted Xianbei's rule and later became a part of the Mongolian nation.

Military significance

The Great Wall is not only the front line of defense for farming people, but also the forward base for launching counterattacks against nomadic people. The rear of the Great Wall is equipped with mobile troops to deal with the war, but the Great Wall is not the forefront of defense, and the observation post deployed in front of the Great Wall goes far. The ancient nomadic cavalry had excellent mobility and strong attack power, but they could do nothing about the wall defense system, so building the Great Wall could effectively resist the invasion of northern nationalities.

But the passive defense of the Great Wall alone cannot stop organized large-scale attacks. "The Deeds of Beilu" records: On the 22nd day of the first month of the tenth year, more than 20,000 people rode to the north town of Huamachi and stopped at Shijinger Wharf. They opened one or two walls and plundered in Guyuan and other places. On July 22nd this year, 20,000 people rode in, set out from Liuyang Pier in the north of Huamachi to Qingyang Pier, demolished 16 wall, went deep into Pingliang Gong Lin, and reached Longzhou, where they plundered. Zhang Deng, the general manager of the Right Empire, transferred the loyalists in Yulin and other places to Guyuan, which was unable to defend. "In the twenty-ninth year of Jiajing (1550), in the Change of Gengxu, when Mongolian Khan attacked Gubeikou head-on, he demolished the Great Wall from Huangyugou, and the Ming army collapsed without fighting. Anda attacked outside Beijing and returned with a lot of trophies.

Cultural significance

The Great Wall is one of the most magnificent projects built in ancient China, which played a very important defensive role in later dynasties. The existence of the Great Wall was also a spiritual defense against invasion for the ancients. Especially in modern times, people in China regard the Great Wall as a symbol of China. March of the Volunteers, the national anthem of the people of China, has the lyrics of "People who don't want to be slaves, build our new Great Wall with our flesh and blood", calling for resistance to aggression at the most critical moment of the country.